


Five Minutes

by walking_tornado



Series: WC Missing Scenes [9]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Episode: s01e13 Front Man, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 16:39:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7809391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walking_tornado/pseuds/walking_tornado
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter demands more details about Wilkes' attempt to kill Neal.  (Missing scene for 1.13 Front Man)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Minutes

**Rice:** _I'd like to borrow Caffrey for the remainder of my case._  
**Peter:** _If Wilkes is behind this, don't you think it's dangerous to put Caffrey on his tail?_  
**Hughes:** _Caffrey's proven he can take care of himself. Neal, starting immediately you report to Agent Rice._  
**Rice:** _Good. Now that we're all on the same page, let's start with an easy one. When's the last time that you saw Wilkes?_  
**Neal:** _Probably when he tried to kill me._

"When he . . . What?" Peter let the file folder drop to the table and turned from Hughes to Neal. Neal raised his shoulders, intending to shrug the incident away, but Peter's hard stare halted the motion.  


"Neal?" Peter said. While it sounded like a question, it was clearly an order to talk. Neal could hear Peter's irritation warring with his concern, and he knew that Peter would misinterpret his pause to find the best phrasing as an attempt to intentionally hide the truth.  


"There was a job he wanted to do," Neal said. "Was going to be dangerous for bystanders, so I... made it not happen. He held a grudge."  


Peter didn't look much happier but, instead of continuing to glare at Neal, he turned back to Hughes. Agent Rice looked between him and Peter, eyes narrowed in judgement, but Peter held most of Neal's attention.  


"Caffrey's the wrong person for this," Peter insisted.  


"I disagree," Hughes said, with a firmness that indicated the decision had been made. "Sounds like Caffrey is uniquely motivated to help us catch this guy and find our missing girl. Agent Burke, do we have a problem?" Hughes added when Peter's mouth thinned in disapproval. Peter shook his head and Hughes nodded as he stood up. "Good. Find me that girl," he told them as he left the room.  


"Excuse us a moment, " Peter said. He took Neal by the arm and escorted him into his office without giving Agent Rice a chance to respond.  


"Explain," Peter said, as soon as he'd closed his office door. It cut the ever-present background noise of FBI agent chatter, but the lack of decent walls in the open-concept design left Neal feeling exposed.  


"Explain what?" Neal asked.  


"He tried to kill you?"  


"Yes."  


"Neal!"  


"What's the statute—"  


"So help me, I'll send you back right now if you don't come clean."  


Neal cast his eyes about the room as he tried to frame the story in a way that wouldn't get him rearrested.  


"Five minutes, that's it," Peter said, reaching the end of his patience. "Immunity for what you tell me with Wilkes."  


"I met Wilkes by accident, at one of his underground casinos." With Peter's temporary amnesty in place, Neal couldn't speak fast enough.  


"You were running a scam," Peter said. It wasn't a question, and Neal didn't dispute its veracity.  


"He roughed me up and then offered me a job on his crew." Neal's eyes tracked the second hand on the large wall clock as he came clean about his brief and busy time with Wilkes: the id forgeries, the counterfeit money, the laundering scheme, the increase in violent coercion, and the escalation into armed robbery. Neal sped up towards the end and finished exactly at his five-minute limit. Then he took a breath and ventured a glance a Peter, whose poker face looked carved in granite.  


"They were dangerous guys, Peter; they would have hurt someone," Neal said, wondering why it was so difficult for people to believe he could have good intentions and why it was so important to him that Peter knew he did the right thing. "So I gathered information—times, dates, contacts—and I made an anonymous call to the FBI. I didn't give them enough to nail Wilkes, but it wrecked his plans."  


"I don't imagine Wilkes liked that much." Neither Peter's tone nor his words revealed his thoughts on what Neal had said.  


Neal laughed, but it felt like plastic on his face: clearly fake and overly shiny. "No, he didn't." He paused. "He worked me over pretty thoroughly then had his guys take me to the river. . ."  


"And?"  


Neal shrugged. "I talked my way out. It's what I do," he added, as if it were nothing.  


"That's it?"  


Neal had needed weeks to recover from Wilkes' beating. It had been longer before he could hear a closing door without hearing the gunshot that had missed his head to strike the wall of the warehouse behind him. He could still clearly picture the chuckle of Wilkes' thug who then holstered his weapon with a smug grin on his face. Wilkes's man loomed over him to fill his entire field of vision, and while Neal could hear the gentle lapping of the waves against the dock, he didn't look away from his intended executioner. A pebble on the uneven wet concrete had bitten into his knee, and the breeze off the water carried with it the acrid stench of exhaust from one of the passing tugboats.  


"Okay," the man had said, calmly watching Neal who couldn't seem to stop shaking. "I accept your offer."  


The money from the artwork that Neal had stolen from Wilkes' intended targets—barely an hour before Wilkes and his crew had arrived and been met by police—had comfortably covered the payout.  


Peter still watched him, waiting for an answer. From the corner of his eye, through the glass walls, Neal saw Agent Rice walking towards them.  


"Yeah, that's it," Neal said. Without looking at Peter, he walked towards Rice who had given him an imperious double-fingered summons. 


End file.
